Scottish Court of Session Decisions

LORD PRESIDENT (Normand).—In this case the pursuer, a young woman of 23 years of age, sues the father of a man, whom at one time she was engaged to marry, for damages, alleging against him that he wrongfully induced his son, then a minor, to break off his engagement with her. The pursuer and the defender's son had fixed a date on which the marriage was to take place. The father wrote to the pursuer's father a letter in which he complained that he was grieved and annoyed that the proposal that a marriage should take place had been put forward without his permission or consent, or even without it being brought to his notice by the proper people concerned. He also stated that he strongly resented this action, and suggested that probably the father of the pursuer was not "aware of the above facts." His position is then stated that, as the legal guardian of the boy, he had forbidden the marriage to take place. The pursuer avers that, before the letter was written, the defender knew that the parties were courting, and that there was between them an engagement to marry. I am not quite certain whether the letter, fairly read, relates to that. In my view the defender may be referring to the arrangement that the marriage should take place at a certain date, when he says that he was grieved and annoyed that such a proposal had been put forward without his permission or consent, or even without it being brought to his notice by the proper people concerned.

However that may be, the real complaint is that the defender maliciously used his position as father of Peter Blaylock to incite and coerce him to break his promise of marriage with the pursuer. It is further said that the defender wrongfully and maliciously and without reasonable or probable cause used his position as employer of his son to incite and coerce him to break his promise of marriage and provided him with funds to fly from Scotland. When the pursuer's counsel was asked where the particular specification relating to this coercion was to be found, we were referred to another averment that the father

had dismissed the boy from his employment with himself. I do not understand how such a dismissal, which was operative notwithstanding that the boy had broken off the engagement, can have been regarded as an inducement to break off the engagement. It appears to me that the record, which contains averments of malice in general terms, contains no particular averment from which any obliquity of motive can be inferred.

The Sheriff-substitute has dealt with the case by sustaining both the plea to competency and the plea to relevancy. I think that the action is not in the proper sense an incompetent action, but that the Sheriff-substitute did right when he sustained the plea to relevancy. It is no doubt true that, if a person, knowing that another person has a contractual relation with a third party, induces that person to break that contractual relation, he may be liable to the third party whose contract in consequence of his action is thereby breached. There are illustrations of that both in Scotland and in England. In one of these cases, Glamorgan Coal Co. v. South Wales Miners' Federation, the very kind of case that is now before us was referred to by Stirling, LJ., in the King's Bench Division and by Lord Lindley in the House of Lords. In the King's Bench, Stirling, L.J., says (at p. 577):

"That interference with contractual relations known to the law may in some cases be justified is not, in my opinion, open to doubt. For example, I think that a father who discovered that a child of his had entered into an engagement to marry a person of immoral character would not only be justified in interfering to prevent that contract being carried into effect, but would greatly fail in his duty to his child if he did not. This duty is recognised by the Courts; for the Court of Chancery and the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice have continually so interfered on behalf of wards of Court, sometimes with a heavy hand; and the principle on which the judges of those Courts have acted is simply that of doing on behalf of the ward that which a right-minded father would do in the true interest of his child."

I entirely agree with that. I think it is the duty of a father to consider whether a marriage which his son, and particularly a minor son, proposes to contract is one which he should encourage or discourage. If a father decides to dissuade his son from entering into a proposed marriage, it should reasonably be presumed that his dissuasion is brought to bear in the exercise of his parental duty to guide his son in a matter of such vital importance to his future happiness. Accordingly, if the dissuasion is to be said to have been inconsistent with his parental duty, and to have been actuated by motives which were oblique and not related to his son's future welfare, or if it is to be said that the dissuasion was exercised merely in order to inflict an unwarrantable wrong upon the woman to whom the son was engaged—these allegations must be supported by clear and specific averments of facts and circumstances from which the wrongful motive and malice may be

inferred. It is not necessary to decide in this case what facts and circumstances would have to be specified in order that a relevant case might be made, and I am assuming rather than deciding that it would be possible in a case of this sort for a father to render himself liable for damages for inducing his son to break a promise of marriage. In the same case of Glamorgan Coal Co. v. South Wales Miners' Federation Lord Lindley, in dealing with the observations of Stirling, L.J., said (at p. 254) that it was not necessary "to consider what a parent or guardian may do to protect his child or ward. That there are cases in which it is not actionable to exhort a person to break a contract may be admitted; and it is very difficult to draw a sharp line separating all such cases from all others." Without attempting to draw any definite and sharp line which will lay down a clear rule about the circumstances under which one party can sue another for inciting a third party to break a contract, I am clearly of opinion that there is no difficulty in disposing of this case. Here we have nothing but the adverb "maliciously," and similar phraseology, to buttress the idea that any wrong was done. There is no averment of any wrongful act of any sort committed by the father. There is no averment that he was actuated by any kind of malice directed against the pursuer at all. All that is left upon the general statement that he acted maliciously. The defender is therefore to be presumed to have acted in pursuance of the duty which he owed to his son, and for such action he is not answerable to the pursuer although it resulted in breach of the son's promise to marry her.

In my opinion the case is irrelevant; and while, therefore, I cannot support the Sheriff-substitute in holding the action to be incompetent. I suggest that, to that extent only, his interlocutor should be recalled, and that we affirm the remaining part of the interlocutor.

LORD FLEMING .—I am of the same opinion. I think that, if a father induces his son to break off an engagement to marry, the presumption is that he does so in the proper exercise of his parental control. It is his duty to consider whether a proposed marriage is one to which as a father he ought to give his consent, especially where, as here, the son is a minor. I am unable to find any averment in this record from which it can reasonably be inferred that the defender acted from any oblique or improper motive or without reasonable justification.

LORD MONCRIEFF .—I agree. The pursuer claims damages upon an averment that there has been a wrongful interference with her contractual rights. That is a typical foundation of a claim for damages, and, if relevant averments had been made to support the claim, I do not doubt that the action would have been competent. I accordingly recognise with your Lordship that the decision of the learned Sheriff-

substitute cannot be supported in so far as he has sustained the first plea in law for the defender.

As regards the relevancy of the averments, while I very much deprecate any extension of the remedies which our law affors to one who has suffered in consequence of the breach of a promise of marriage, I do not find it possible to decide that those who interfere with the fulfilment of such a promise may not in appropriate cases be found liable in respect of such interference. At the same time I think that, where this particular interest under contract is pleaded, the case should he very narrowly viewed by the Court before any such remedy is accorded to a pursuer. In a case where interference with the completion of the marriage has been interference on the part of a father, and more especially in a case in which the party to the marriage whom he has sought to influence is still in minoritym, I think there is a very well-founded presumption that the father has acted, not in the commission of a wrong, but in discharge of his parental duty towards his child.

In the present case I find in the averments of the pursuer nothing to displace that general and salutary presumption. It is true that in her first plea in law she describes the action of the father as having been wanton, wrongful and malicious; and, had she made averments to support the use of these adjectives or even of one of them, she might quite possibly have been entitled to have her averments remitted for inquiry. All that she has averred, however, is that the father wrote a letter in which he intimated he was to do his best to prevent the marriage, and disclosed as his principal reason for interference a feeling of resentment in consequence of the whole of the arrangements for the marriage having been concealed from him. I think there were other reasons, as disclosed in the averments of the pursuer herself, upon which the father might in this case have justified his interference. More-over, even on his own explanation of the writing of the letter, I do not find from the fact that it was written enough per se to support an inference that the action of the father was wrongful or malicious. The pursuer goes on to aver, or the defender admits, that the father turned his son out of his house, turned him out of his employment, and sent him to England. These are, however, stated to have been completed and not conditional acts, and, accordingly, while they may have punished the offending son, cannot (so far as the pursuer explains them) be supposed to have influenced him towards a breach of his engagement. On the general ground that I find no relevant averment as against a father of a wrongful act, I agree with your Lordship that the second plea in law stated by the defender should be sustained.